A patent application filed by Apple reveals an interesting possible development of iPad's Smart Cover, which may get a display of its own down the road.

The application, originally filed in August 2011 and made public today, describes "thin flexible display technology" which can be integrated into the cover. This secondary display, Apple believes, would "greatly enhance" the overall functionality of the tablet.

The concept opens up a lot of possibilities. The secondary display, as described in Apple's patent application, could simply display notifications related to what's happening on the iPad (the name of the movie currently playing, for example). It could also be a full-fl… Continue reading...

Will Apple charge $800 for the iPhone 5? Not likely, but a rumor to that effect has been circulating on Twitter.

Two topics related to the rumor -- #800dollarsforaniPhone" and "iPhone 5 $800" -- were trending on Twitter on Thursday. Most users seemed to treat the topic as an opportunity to show off their comic chops:

Timelapse videos provide for some pretty amazing online viewing -- but what exactly are they?

These fascinating videos are created by capturing motion with an intentionally lower frame rate than that of video, then playing the footage back at normal video speed. The technique allows us to trace motion that is normally imperceptible, like stars moving across the sky or melting snow, and view it as an expedited process.

The results are truly visually inspiring. This is why it's also a great way to test out new photographic techniques, like high dynamic range, or super-shallow, constantly changing tilt shift focus.

Welcome to this morning's edition of 'First To Know,' a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Apple Holds 68 Percent of the Tablet Market

According to IDC's latest report, Apple's iPad holds 68 percent of the tablet market after a stellar second quarter.

Total worldwide tablet shipments for Q2 2012 were 25 million units, representing a 66.2% year-over-year growth. Apple shipped 17 million iPads during the quarter, up from 11.8 million units in 1Q12. Samsung took the second place with 2.4 million units shipped, up from 1.1 million units a year ago.

Other top influencers include basketball scoring machine Kevin Durant, swimmer Ryan Lochte and gymnasts Jordyn Wieber and Aly Raisman. This all comes from the social media analytics company PeopleBrowsr, which recently pulled data using its Kred influence measurement tool to create the infographic below. Kred's algorithms measure Twitter reach and influence, as well as how generous users are about interacting with their followers.

Iran's Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei joined Instagram last week and so far has posted four photos. Iran's supreme leader since 1989 chose to share shots that likely show scenes of Ramadan.

It comes as a surprise to some that a person who has been slow to get onboard with social media trends -- not to mention Iran's stance toward its citizens' use of the social media -- has joined Instagram. His Twitter account has 4,337 followers so far, and links to his Instagram account. Also posted on his Twitter account are links to YouTube videos and stories about his visits with other world and religious leaders.

It's no surprise that his Twitter account has received some flack from those who sa… Continue reading...

India's call centers kept answering the phones Monday and Tuesday, as 680 million people in the country's northern and eastern provinces faced a crippling power outage, the largest ever electrical blackout in world history.

Call centers for foreign companies, as well as major hospitals and airports, were able to switch from the main electrical grid to backup gas and diesel generators.

"Operations at Wipro's facilities across India continued as normal," Hariprasad Hegde, global operations head for outsourcing company Wipro Technologies, told FoxNews.com. "Wipro facilities have a strong backup infrastructure and contingency plans to deal with such eventualities."

The developer of a Facebook app has gone public with a post claiming that Facebook executives tried to hire him because the company was building a similar app.

While the idea of an "aqui-hire" might not sound bad to some, Dalton Caldwell, the CEO of App.net, charges that Facebook uses its heft to intimidate developers like himself rather than help build up the app community.

Reps from Facebook could not be reached for comment.

In a post entitled "Dear Mark Zuckerberg," Dalton claims he visited Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters on June 13 and met with several execs at the company. "I was hoping the outcome of this meeting would be executive-level support for my impen… Continue reading...

The most-shared ad of July is a riveting, white-knuckle adrenaline ride through the streets of San Francisco. Watching Ken Block rip and shred through turns is a pure delight for speed junkies and gearheads. Anyone who winces at car crashes in movies - this is not for you. But good luck looking away.

Success on YouTube is a tricky thing. It takes the right mix of several different factors to make a video's share count truly skyrocket.

The list of videos we've compiled prominently feature some of those winning themes. The top ad is a rip-roaring race through the streets of San Francisco. The camera work is gritty and dynamic and feels like a chase scene from a Hollywood blockbuster. It puts you in the driver's seat, the wheel well, the hood and in the sky as the driver careens around turns and flies over hills.

Quick Pitch: Centzy is an online platform that provides rates for local services.

Genius Idea: By showing specific price-points alongside reviews, Centzy saves you the trouble of calling around to find the best rate.

Choosing a hair salon or dry cleaning service based on quality is easy -- with the amount of user reviews available online, you never have to chance a bad visit to a new business. Finding actual rates online, however, proves a bit more challenging. After all, "$" and "$$" aren't very specific.

That's where Centzy comes in. The new price comparison site allows you to see prices for local services alongside reviews from Yelp, Citysearch and mo… Continue reading...

For his birthday one year, Justin Stanislaw didn't get the gift he really wanted: a trip to an Orlando Magic game.

But after adding up the cost of all the gifts and cards he received, Justin figured out that he could have actually made the game had everyone just collaborated. And that was the ah-ha moment that spawned Giftiki, a startup company that promotes gift-giving en masse.

Justin and his co-founder Bryan Jowers recently launched a more social side of Giftiki where celebrities ask for charitable donations instead of gifts. Fans and friends alike can then team up and give a gift to a cause. For Sofia Vergara, that cause was Dreams… Continue reading...

Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith set a British women's record in the clean-and-jerk on Monday -- but that may have only been the eighteen-year-old's second most impressive victory of July.

Earlier in the month, Smith and her women's weightlifting teammates were the subject of a BBC documentary about their journey to the Olympics. When the group searched Twitter to see how people were responding to the program, they were flattered to see a deluge of complimentary tweets. But a smaller group of male trolls used the social network to denigrate their appearance and, in so many words, call them manly lesbians unfit for visual consumption.

While Adidas may be the official sponsor of the London Olympics, Nike is running a Summer Games campaign that puts the spotlight on non-Olympians in other Londontowns around the world to support its claim that "greatness is for all of us."

The kid in this video -- 12-year-old Nathan from London, Ohio -- proves one thing, according to Nike: "Greatness is not beyond his reach, nor is it for any of us."

The inspirational spot has some serious viral appeal, gaining more than 60,000 views after just one day on Nike's official YouTube page.

Does this ad inspire you, or is it pointless propaganda? Share your take in the comments.

The browser can't block coverage entirely; indeed, in our tests, quite a few spoilers slipped through. But it does recognize keywords associated with the Games and places a different Olympic color over each one whenever they appear.

HelloFax, the company that lets you send and receive digital faxes, has spun off its digital signature service into a new stand-alone product: HelloSign.

"Everyone has to sign documents, and it's done in a really poor way right now, which is what we're trying to fix," Joseph Walla, CEO of HelloSign (and HelloFax) told Mashable.

Documents can be signed and securely returned to their sender from both the web and the company's new iPhone application. Unlike some similar services and apps that are already out there, digital signatures using the service are free and unlimited so you can send and receive just a few documents -- or all the contracts for your business -- with the ser… Continue reading...

The figure was good enough to earn the social network kudos from Greenpeace -- and allowed it to look down its nose at less environmentally-friendly tech rivals, such as Google.

Facebook's total energy usage last year measured 532 million Kilowatt hours; minus the 36% of its energy the company gets from renewable and nuclear sources, that led to 285,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.

Compare that with the most recent annual total for Google: 1.5 million tons of CO2 in 2010. The relative difference in size be… Continue reading...

There are wedgies, and then there are wedgies. And then...there is this.

To provide some basic play-by-play, a shirtless dude tries to hurdle a golf cart in front of his friends. He clears the cart, but his shorts get caught on the cart's roof. That delivers the dreaded hanging wedgie, with a side dish of downward force that tilts the cart over several degrees.

The video was posted to YouTube in mid-July, and has so far gained nearly a quarter million views. But it caught on with some blogs on Wednesday, signaling that its true viral life may just be beginning.

Mashable's unscientific analysis deems this the world's biggest wedgie. What do you think? Regale us with your nomin… Continue reading...

YouTube users now watch more than four billion hours of video through the site each month. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 456,000 years of cat videos, sports highlights, TED Talks and other content per month. Or, the equivalent of watching the original Nyan Cat video about 66 billion times.

First reported as a casual mention in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this week, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed the number to Mashable on Wednesday. And things are moving fast with the video sharing giant -- the company just announced in May that users were watching a piddling three billion hours of footage per month. That's the number YouTube still reports on its official pres… Continue reading...

The resignation of Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue from Twitter's board of directors indicates it's a legitimate possibility. A Flipboard spokesperson confirmed to Mashable on Wednesday that McCue has indeed stepped down. McCue has been on Twitter's board since December 2010, about five months after Flipboard first launched on the iPad.

Design a pair of shoes on your computer, hit "Print," and wear them an hour later. If that kind of technology doesn't blow your mind, you're dead to me.

The cost of 3D printing technology is finally within the grasp of consumers, and many believe it's poised to revolutionize commerce. Companies are rushing to get out in front of this new custom marketplace, offering 3D-printed fashion, furniture and even food.

But how does this technology work? What kind of materials does it utilize? And how fast is this industry growing? The folks at HighTable.com have created the visual explanation below. Regrettably, this infographic will only pri… Continue reading...

For the past six months, The New Yorker's PR department has been promoting the photography and illustrations in current and past issues via Instagram. Now, it's handing over the reins to the photographers who shoot for the New Yorker.

"We love Instagram, it's a great place to promote photography, but we felt that we were not using it properly," Alexa Cassanos, senior director of public relations for the New Yorker, said of the decision.

Staff photographers will rotate ownership of the account "every few weeks or so," says Cassanos, beginning with Martin Schoeller, a staff photographer for The New Yorker since 1999. Over the past couple years, Schoeller has been photographing sets of id… Continue reading...

Google on Wednesday released a cloud-based version of its Google Wallet app that now supports credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.

The latest app allows users to shop both in stores and online, so a phone could be tapped to pay for a double shot macchiato at a cafe, a taxi ride or even make a purchase on the web.

Google Wallet was launched in 2011, replacing Google Checkout. It's an app that uses a short-range wireless technology called near-field communication (NFC) to let users pay for things by simply waving their phones in front of NFC-compatible terminals at merchants.

It's not just about the network's insistence on waiting to show events on TV that took place up to 16 hours earlier; any fan with a TiVo and a work schedule must at some point get used to the game of waiting and avoiding spoilers. Besides, a cable subscription and an Internet connection will yield you as many hours of on… Continue reading...

Dropbox is the latest tech company to have fallen victim to a security breach, and there's a good chance your account is at risk.

But unlike recent hacks on sites such as Yahoo, LinkedIn and eHarmony, account names and passwords weren't posted online, making it more difficult to check via a tool if yours was compromised.

The good news is that Dropbox has taken steps to notify affected users via email about the incident and have urged them to change their passwords immediately. The bad news is that just because you changed your Dropbox password doesn't mean other accounts that take the same password -- from Facebook to Gmail -- are safe.

Near the top of the Senate's agenda this week is the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, or CSA, a bill designed to help protect vital industries from cyberattacks.

While some Internet advocacy groups thought the bill had potential to protect networks while also preserving Internet users' privacy, many are now warning of attempts by some lawmakers to eliminate privacy protections during the amendment process.

Fight for the Future, a recently formed organization that includes many opponents of the Stop Online Privacy Act, launched an informational campaign called "Do you have a secret?" on Wednesday. At the core of the campaign is a website that warns of amendments to the CSA the group clai… Continue reading...

Technology can help you find a restaurant, locate a parking spot, and even get you a date. But how can mobile apps impact the more crucial aspects of a person's life, like safety and well being?

While apps can't replace your doctor or local police, there are many that can make a major difference in an emergency. Here are nine that will help you prepare for, react to, and report such situations.

Prepare Emergency preparedness isn't just about extra batteries and jugs of drinking water. It's about making sure you have access to the right information when you need it most. The following apps allow you to prepare for emergencies before they occur.

"That's definitely not a jellyfish, right? They told me there were no jellyfish in this pool." -- @L2012PoolCam

You've seen the live streams, been tainted by the Twitter spoilers and watched the tape-delayed primetime packages -- but you've never seen the Olympics like this.

Basketball photos shot from above the backboard. Swimming stills from the pool floor. Bird's-eye-views of judo and table tennis intensity. These and more come thanks to a series of London 2012 Twitter accounts that are sharing photos of the Games unlike anything you typically see in more mainstream Olympics coverage. What's more, the camera accounts offer pithy first-person comments on what they capture.

Are you waiting for KFC to weigh in on the Chick-fil-A same-sex marriage controversy? Well, keep waiting, but in the meantime enjoy this very unauthorized Funny or Die re-imagining of KFC mascot Colonel Sanders' take on the issue.

Here, Sanders (John Goodman) is presented as quite gay-friendly. Why, he even listens to Bette Midler! But deep down, the Colonel doesn't give a hoot one way or the other: He just sees all customers as "money-mouths, walking around talkin' and eatin'."

Well, that clears that up.

What do you think? Is this parody finger lickin' good or a bunch of hooey? Let us know in the comments.